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Germany: "Democratic" Imperialism and the Lie of Collective Guilt (Quote of the Week) In the wake of World War II, the Fourth International denounced the lie propounded by the capitalist “democracies,” as well as by the Social Democrats and Stalinists, that the German proletariat and the German people as a whole were guilty of the monstrous crimes of Hitlerite fascism. Expressing their solidarity with the working people of ravaged Germany, the Trotskyists reasserted the necessity to sweep away the barbaric capitalist world order through proletarian revolution. Truth demands that we tell the world proletariat Hitler-fascism was not a pure “German” phenomenon, but the most violent dictatorship of German monopoly capitalism against the German working people.... The guilt of international capitalism in supporting Hitler-fascism is only underlined in retrospect when it plasters the label of “guilty” on the German people in order to squeeze billions in reparations out of them. Truth further demands that we note the Second World War broke out when Hitler attempted in the interests of German monopoly capitalism to secure a world redivision of markets and spheres of influence. If Hitler, representing belated German imperialism on the world market, appears as the aggressor, the other imperialists cannot thereby be labelled peace-loving democrats, since they simply defended imperialist robberies made at an earlier stage.... We International Communists therefore denounce as the main culprit above all the capitalist system which creates war and fascism. We say to the German proletariat and all other workers that the fall of Hitler-fascism has not assured world peace. Peace can be secured only through the struggle for socialism and the Socialist United States of the World.... In the final analysis the victorious imperialists, as well as the defeated Hitler-fascists and the now hypocritically democratic German bourgeoisie all find their main enemy to be the proletarian revolution. The treatment of the German people on the principle of collective-guilt provides the fascists precisely with new possibilities to fish in the murky waters of nationalism. The danger is all the greater since if the German people are collectively guilty then the Nazis who are the real guilty ones can logically hope to escape punishment. We warn the German proletariat not to trust this bourgeoisie which now declares itself to be democratic. These new “anti-fascists” in reality are the same capitalist cliques who are already utilizing their connections with the international trusts to reorganize their class front against the German proletariat, and who want to make a pact with the foreign imperialists to load German reparations on the backs of the German people. —“International Solidarity With the German Proletariat,” Fourth International (January 1946)
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